


where he belongs

by foundCarcosa



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: (kinda????), Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 09:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15838764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: Noah gets a good dose of radiation and just wants to be in Preston's arms.





	where he belongs

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably gonna confuse you. if you stay til the end anyway, check out the comments for some clarification :p

Preston is poring over settlement trade agreements when the door to the office clicks open. Too focused to respond at first, he scrubs a hand over his fade, which is already starting to grow out. Maybe he'd go see his man Zeke in Diamond City again, catch up on the local news while getting his hair cut. Or maybe he'd just let it go. Noah would enjoy having something to sink his fingers into and tug on, wouldn't he...

That thought interrupts Preston's focus, and he dimly recalls hearing the sound of the door opening. He looks up quickly, and finds Noah still hovering in the doorway, his hand tight around the doorknob, his body swaying gently as if rocked by a gust of wind.

Preston knows that look, the vaguely-unmoored look. Sometimes Noah looks like this without radiation, but usually it takes a generous dose of rads to make him...

There aren't any words for it, not any words that Preston knows. He wants to be upset with Noah for dosing, but most of the time Noah doesn't do it on purpose -- the Wasteland is full of radiation, after all -- and the rest of the time... if Preston is honest with himself, he's not sure the intentional-seeming episodes are as intentional as they appear. There have always been other forces at work, haven't there... the same forces that made Noah the way he is in the first place.  
Noah sways in the doorway of the office he'd been given, the office he rarely uses, and stares at Preston as if he has never seen the man in his life.

\-- _No,_ Preston thinks, pushing his chair back from the desk and waiting. Not as if he's never seen Preston before. But as if he is seeing Preston anew.

"Well, come in," Preston sighs, beckoning. And Noah starts, as if surprised, and looks down at his hand, white-knuckling the doorknob, and down at his feet. He seems to regain himself after that and advances into the room with uneven footsteps. The door creaks closed behind him, unnoticed.

"I know. You don't like this... _me_ like this... but... couldn't help coming. Couldn't not come. Wanted to see you," Noah speaks in the halting, husky tones that Preston has learned to associate with Noah's trips. "Wanted it like... like wanting water, wanting food. Would have gone to... High Rise, someone. But none of them... they don't know me. You know me."

In a rush, Preston feels guilty for any uncharitable feeling he'd had upon seeing Noah swaying in the doorway. "It's all right... you scare me sometimes, is all. But it's... all right."

Noah comes shambling around the desk, a hand fluttering out to steady him, and there's a shyness in his approach, like he expects rejection. Noah is always easy to wound, always more vulnerable than the post-War world should allow; but now, like this, he is the very picture of fragility. Radiation doesn't bore holes in his flesh, but it erodes his defenses and his filters, makes him raw and open, far too open. He watches Preston uncertainly as he stands in front of him, his hands reaching automatically but then faltering, curling in. Fondness for him blooms hot and aching behind Preston's ribcage, and he takes Noah's hands, feeling their fevered trembling.

"It's all right," he says again, and Noah shudders an exhale and stumbles into Preston's embrace, clumsily straddling him and burying his face in the broken-in softness of Preston's shirt. He is trembling all over, and Preston instinctively pulls him in close, wishing it didn't have to be like this -- whatever that meant -- but also embarrassed at the realisation that he likes the way his lover's shuddering touch-hungry body feels in his arms just now.

"I know... you don't love me like this," Noah says, muffled against Preston's shoulder. "I'm a..." He seems to want to say something harsh and self-castigating, but the words stick in his throat and his breath hitches. Preston squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head a little, feeling sorrow and anger and love and a savage sort of desire all churning in his core. "But... every time... I just want to be home. Want to be loved. Not used. Not laughed at. He... laughs at me..."

Preston had only met Noah's unnatural father once, the architect of destruction that the strange zealots in the Glowing Sea worshipped -- but once had been more than enough. Atom had been scornful and scathing, _furious_ that some lasgun-toting, smart-mouthed Wastelander stood between him and his son, who should have been his heir and the continuation of his earthly horrors.  
Atom preyed upon Noah continuously, even to the point of irradiating him against his will to further erode his integrity and his conviction. And Atom knew Preston feared what radiation did to Noah, more than he feared what radiation normally did to people. Atom knew, and used that.

To turn Noah away when he is like this, to make him feel ashamed of it, would be playing right into Atom's world-breaking hands.

Preston takes Noah's face in his hands and pulls him up and out of hiding, looking steadily into his unfocused, over-bright eyes. His face is slack and his skin damp with sweat, but to Preston he is still achingly beautiful, and Preston does his best to make his gaze reflect that feeling. "It's all right," he repeats, firmly, and watches as Noah's eyes well up. "You don't have to hide anything from me. Haven't I stayed with you through everything?"

"I... I hear him..."

"He lies," Preston says loudly, determined to drown Atom out. "He lies, because he knows he can't have you. Forget him. You're here with me. Focus on me."

He watches his words take effect; Noah's thousand-yard stare pulling back to meet Preston's, his hands fluttering up to Preston's chest and over his shoulders, his head tilting back and forth to press into Preston's palms in that way of his.

"Good. That's my good Noah," Preston says because he knows Noah likes it, and like always Noah melts in his hands and whimpers quietly, and Preston kisses him because he can't help himself, and Noah opens his mouth to him, his body relaxing and his thighs falling open, and maybe Preston had been thinking about this rad-high thing all wrong. Because Noah is incredibly fetching normally, but like this he is pliant and needy and shudders everywhere Preston touches him, and his mouth is hot and his skin is sweat-slick and already his cock pulses insistently against Preston's belly. He is all nerve endings and uninhibited response, and every part of Preston is into it.

Someone once told him that every good instinct has a dark side, and the dark side of the instinct to protect is the instinct to possess. Preston thinks he might know something about that, now, feeling the red urge to imprint himself indelibly in Noah's flesh, to take in hand Noah's face, his cock, his very beating heart, and declare through gritted teeth, _Mine, all of it,_ and feel Noah shudder in blissful acceptance.

 _That's not like me at all,_ Preston thinks, but maybe it is after all. He, too, contained multitudes.

In the end, both of them half-dressed and sweat-slick and panting, he does grip Noah's cock in his hand, along with his own, and squeeze, and whisper in Noah's ear, "Now, babe. Come for me now," and whisper, "Good. Good. Oh, fuck, that's good," when Noah immediately digs his fingertips into Preston's sides and muffles his moans in Preston's shoulders, coming. A satisfaction beyond satisfaction-- to know that all it takes is Preston's voice, and Preston's hands, to undo him.

"I... uh, didn't mean for this to happen," he says a few minutes later, entirely embarrassed, as they take stock of themselves -- sheepish, completely disheveled, anointed in sweat and come. "I don't know what came over me."

Noah is not yet sober but getting there, much of the radiation having been worked off in their exertion. He laughs breathlessly, sweeping his damp hair off his forehead. "I wish it'd come over you more often."

"I wish _you'd_ come over me more often," Preston fires back saucily, even though he flushes at the lewdness of the joke, eliciting more laughter from Noah. It is good to hear him laugh. It is all good, all of it.


End file.
